Farage's small boats plan not about policy but putting Labour and Tories on the spot

If you want a dissection of whether the £10bn cost of Reform UK's new deportation policy is an underestimate, the analysis that follows is going to disappoint.

Likewise, if you are here to hear chapter and verse about the unacknowledged difficulties in striking international migrant returns agreements - which are at the heart of Nigel Farage's latest plan - or a piece that dwells on how he seemed to hand over questions of substance and detail to a colleague, again, prepare to be let down.

Like a magician's prestige, if you laser focus on the policy specifics of Tuesday's Farage small boat plan - outlined in a vast hangar outside Oxford, striking for its scale and echo - you risk misunderstanding the real trick, and Reform's objective for the day.

Politics latest: Farage told to apologise for small boats crisis

For Farage has been around long enough in British politics that we should acknowledge upfront how he pulls the wool over his opponents' eyes, and hence why he seems to wrongfoot them so regularly.

The intent was not to present proposals that will turn into policy reality in 2029.

Nor was it about converting voters in any great number to Reform - if you warmed to Farage before, you might like him a bit more after this, in your view, straight-talking press conference.

If you detested him, you will likely feel that more strongly and draw comparisons with Enoch Powell. I suspect he will be unbothered by either.

Instead, his announcement was about two things: seizing the agenda (ensuring more coverage of an issue redolent of the failure of the two biggest parties in British politics); and then putting both those other parties on the spot.

Success or failure for Farage, in other words, will come in how the Labour and Tory parties respectively respond in the coming days. Look what he's done to the Tories.

The real policy meat of his speech comes in the Farage promise to rip up the post-Second World War settlement for refugees, drawn up with fresh memories of persecuted hordes fleeing the Nazis.

Along with an exit from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Reform UK leader would pause Britain's membership of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention.

Read more: Is it time for a different approach to stop people smugglers?

The pause of British membership of these treaties and conventions may even turn out to be temporary, he said.

"We do think there is hope that the 1951 Refugee Convention of the UN can be revisited and redefined for the modern world," he said.

But action, he argues, is needed now because the 1951 UN Refugee Convention obliges signatories to settle anyone with a "well-founded fear" of persecution.

That, critics say, has become the "founding charter" of today's people-smuggling industry and allows traffickers the right to offer a legal guarantee that if their clients make it to shore they're covered - and boast this works in 98% of cases for the Sudanese and Syrians, and 87% for Eritreans - the recently updated approval rates. A big moment for a major party.

Yet this is almost - but not quite - the Conservative position. On 6 June this year, Kemi Badenoch gave a speech saying she was minded to pull out of the European Convention of Human Rights, and had commissioned a review led by Lord Woolfson to examine whether and how ECHR withdrawal, and pulling out of the the Refugee Convention and the European Convention Against Trafficking, might help.

So she added: "I won't commit my party to leaving the ECHR or other treaties without a clear plan to do so and without a full understanding of all the consequences.

"We saw that holding a referendum without a plan to get Brexit done, led to years of wrangling and endless arguments until we got it sorted in 2019. We cannot go through that again.

"I want us to fully understand and debate what the unintended consequences of that decision might be and understand what issues will still remain unresolved even if we leave.

"It is very important for our country that we get this right. We must look before we leap."

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In other words, what Reform UK did was steal a march on a likely Tory decision at conference.

Farage has eaten Badenoch's homework. And she has been left accusing him of being a copycat of a policy she hadn't quite adopted.

Then there is Labour. They accept the ends of Farage's argument, but not, it seems, the means.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is reviewing parts of the European Convention on Human Rights - Article 3 (which prohibits torture, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment) and Article 8 (which protects the right to a family life).

But that hasn't emerged yet, and will not, at its maximalist outcome, recommend the UK withdrawal from the convention.

And will Labour strategists really want the spectre of ministers having to repeatedly argue in favour of ECHR membership in interviews, given that is likely to be the position of two of their biggest opponents? Another conundrum for Labour, which has Farage as the author.

Then there is the question of language for both Labour and the Tories. Dare they go as far as Reform UK and adopt a tone more aggressive than anything seen in recent years - one which talks of "invasions" and "fighting age males" and sending people back to "where they came from"?

Will both political parties hold that line that this language, in their view, goes too far?

Tuesday's speech was less about voters, more about Westminster politics as we enter political season. All done at an hour-long press conference that gave Farage a platform. Can the other party leaders now look like they're ignoring him and wrestle back the microphone? Or can they not help themselves and respond in kind?